Color printers have become increasingly more commonplace with advances in printing technologies. High-quality, inexpensive color printers are readily commercially available in a wide variety of sizes ranging from portable and desktop inkjet printers for use at home or at the office, to large commercial-grade color printers.
Traditionally, printers were used primarily for printing text documents. Today, however, color printers are available and are routinely used to print complex images, such as digital photographs. The printed image is typically made from multiple passes of print heads which deposit ink onto a substrate. Good printing quality and ink-to-substrate adhesion are achieved when ink wets the substrate. Ink deposited on wettable substrates spreads and exhibits what is known as “positive dot gain.” Various energy sources (e.g., ultra-violate (UV) radiation, blowers, heaters, etc.) may be used to help cure the ink faster and reduce the spread of ink (i.e., reduce “positive dot gain”) to better control image quality.
The print heads are located at different distances from the energy source(s). When the print heads traverse a substrate in one direction, ink ejected by the print head located farther from the energy source spreads for a longer time before being cured by the energy source, than ink ejected by the print head located closer to the energy source. Accordingly, the ink which has had more time to spread before being cured, forms spots larger ink “dots” than the ink which had less time to spread before being cured, resulting in poor image quality.